Today has been a shitty day, like so many others.
And the problem is not that they pile up. It’s that you don’t get used to it.
You don’t get used to going to the hospital and waiting 6 hours to be seen.
You don’t get used to being looked at poorly for taking the elevator with your disabled mother so as not to leave her alone and not to go down the stairs.
You don’t get used to people talking on the phone in the waiting room as if they want to show everyone that they are the new Bill Gates, “Paco, how much are the new Lexus models? I have an order from Uber”.
You don’t get used to the constant psychological abuse we subject each other to in the waiting rooms.
No, you don’t get used to it.
But today, a minor miracle happened, and on the way back, we were picked up by a cab driver who, seeing us with a chard face, made us laugh and told us three stories about the importance of patience that I want to share with you.
Who knows, maybe they will make your day too.
The farting customer.
On Saturday, 3 am, a client calls him from the casino, and the cab driver, John, goes to pick him up. The client gets into the cab and tells him to take him to the train station.
Everything is going typically until the customer, clearly drunk, farts loudly. John says nothing.
But the customer farts again, and this time John looks at him in the rearview mirror, saying with a look, “What’s your deal, man?”
And you know what the customer does?
He opens a bag full of two euro coins with the prize he won on the casino’s slot machines and gives John one.
The customer continues to fart from time to time without being able to control himself, and every time this happens, he repeats the process and gives a coin to John for his trouble.
When he gets off at the train station, John tells my mother and me that he had more than 20 euros in coins.
Grandfather on the run
Another of his anecdotes begins in the same place where he has just picked us up: the hospital.
A man calls him on Monday morning, and when he picks him up, he tells him he wants a ride to a reasonably distant town.
After a couple of hours of driving, the customer’s phone starts ringing. The customer is elderly and doesn’t know how to turn the phone down or turn it off.
John initially tries to do his job despite the insistent “ring, ring” calls. But at one point, he notices something strange. The client has a paper bracelet on his wrist—the typical one worn by hospital patients.
For a moment, he thinks that the customer probably forgot to take it off when he was discharged. But the phone keeps ringing “ring, ring.”
Finally, he stops at a service area and tries to empathize with the customer to get him to loosen up and tell him what is going on.
The client finally confesses: I have escaped from the hospital. I am afraid of being operated on.
John reasons with him, the client recovers his lost courage, and they return to the hospital.
The schizophrenic neighbor
When we arrive at our destination, John tells us he also lives in our neighborhood. And he asks us if we heard about what happened last night.
My mother tells him that we didn’t hear anything unusual.
John tells us there was a tremendous commotion because apparently, a lifelong neighbor called the police and said to them that a friend of hers had been killed.
The police made a full deployment in the neighborhood and laid siege to a bar, where her friend’s body was supposedly found. But when they entered, there were only drunks there.
The woman who called had schizophrenia, and no one knew it. And she believed that her friend was dead in that bar.
Takeaway
These three stories are true, showing that you have to be patient in all professions.
Cab drivers, police officers, and doctors must cultivate patience to help everything work out.
But we also have to do it out of selfishness.
For John, being patient allows him to do his job. As he says, “If I weren’t patient and easily outraged, I wouldn’t be able to work weekend nights, driving drunks home.”
John knows that these people need his services and cultivates his patience so that despite the teasing and challenging situations, his emotional stability does not suffer.
Therefore, the important thing is to see the real reason for cultivating patience. And that reason is that it is the best option and helps you improve your life experience.
You often feel bad, and your mind thinks things like, “He must be an asshole,” or, “I’m going to give him a hard time,” and those thoughts feed the emotion of anger. Therefore the offense is more intense and lasts longer.
What can you do?
You will feel the same emotion but can work on the thought.
Avoid thinking evil thoughts about others and trying to find a justification for their actions is not foolish. It is practical because although it does not eliminate your feeling of being overwhelmed, it does not increase in intensity and duration, and therefore you live less time angry.
So do yourself a favor, and try to reduce your periods of anger, avoiding feeding the fire of anger with thoughts full of ego and negativity.
A virtual hug
AG
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